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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26546212">Perfect</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Asset6/pseuds/The_Asset6'>The_Asset6</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Shameless (US)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Deleted Scene, M/M, outside perspective</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:40:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,522</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26546212</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Asset6/pseuds/The_Asset6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t often that Liam could contribute to his family as much as the rest of them had for years. Maybe that was what made today feel like such a victory. All he needed was to add the finishing touches, and then everything would be perfect.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>143</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Perfect</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Welcome! I present yet another fun little idea that has been bouncing around my head while I finish the prep-work for my next multi-chapter fic. (The first chapter is on its way!) While I'm sure this didn't actually happen, it's still canon compliant, so I like to tell myself it did. :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It wasn’t often that Liam could contribute to his family like the rest of them had for years. He didn’t feel guilty about it, though: everybody else was so much older than him, and it wasn’t as if he’d <em>chosen</em> not to pull his own weight. By the time he reached a point where he really thought about that stuff, most of his siblings had their own lives. They didn’t need to resort to dumping every cent into the squirrel fund so they could survive the winter; Frank ditching them was so far in the past that it wasn’t constantly coming back to bite them when they least expected it. All of his brothers and sisters had decent jobs that paid them adequately so that, while they couldn’t afford to send him to a fancy private school or consider themselves anywhere near approaching middle class, they certainly didn’t struggle quite as much to make ends meet. Liam was content with that, even if it meant that the cohesion born of hardship was also pretty unnecessary too.</p>
<p>Maybe that was what made today such a victory. Liam had been too little to remember it on his own, but he’d listened to his siblings talk about their past exploits, and they were far more impressive than helping him knock out some trashy girl pretending to be pregnant with Liam’s kid and dragging her out of the house on a deflated air mattress. There was the time they had to pretend that Frank had died in order to throw off those thugs he owed money to so that <em>they </em>didn’t kill him. They’d bamboozled social workers repeatedly to hold onto the house and their family for as long as they could, though there had been a few slip-ups that temporarily tore them apart before Fiona became their legal guardian. A fake wedding for Kevin and Veronica, keeping Carl from getting expelled as a psychopath, returning Frank to the care of his alcoholism to prevent him from demolishing the entire house, guilting Monica into not taking Liam away in one of her random passions to start over, cooperatively digging up Aunt Ginger’s remains in the backyard—they could really do anything when they put their minds to it.</p>
<p>So, making a real wedding happen might have been business as usual for everybody else, but for Liam? This was peak Gallagher energy finally coming to fruition again. He’d always been proud to be part of his family despite their fractures and unfortunate ignorance over his racial heritage. (How exactly <em>he’d </em>ended up the only black member of the family when they shared the same genes was beyond him, but he’d stopped questioning the logic behind Frank and Monica’s biology when he was seven.) Now, he had more than just a reputation to hold onto.</p>
<p>Lip and Tami had set aside their fight over moving to Milwaukee. Debbie had cried her way to a venue <em>and</em> discounted alcohol. Carl had organized a human shield so that a bunch of homophobes didn’t murder the groom and groom. Frank hadn’t opened his mouth except to cheer and awkwardly make out with that Polish lady on a chair that <em>definitely</em> shouldn’t have been able to hold their combined weight. Liam had secured an appropriately fancy wedding present for the honeymoon.</p>
<p>Ian and Mickey had gotten married, against all odds.</p>
<p>And he was really proud of that. Liam would <em>still</em> be proud of it when the party was over and everything went back to normal. They’d all be too busy with their lives again to really pay much attention to him, not that he minded it a whole lot. Losing his rich former classmates had taught him that better than anything else. Being South Side meant that although your family would always have your back, you had to take care of yourself regardless. All of his siblings had done it, and it was his turn to do the same. Memories like these, however, would make it a lot easier.</p>
<p>But there was something missing. Ian had commented on it between the ceremony and the reception while they took some boring wedding photos.</p>
<p>They were one Gallagher short.</p>
<p>Liam left Mickey, Sandy, and Debbie to dance (if <em>that</em> was what they wanted to call it) and collapsed into a chair at a table far enough from Frank that he wouldn’t have to hear the sounds of lip smacking. Seriously, did he have to be so gross <em>all</em> the time?</p>
<p>
  <em>Probably.</em>
</p>
<p>It <em>was</em> Frank, after all.</p>
<p>Shaking his head, Liam pulled his phone from the pocket of his suit where it had been jabbing into his leg for the last few hours and scrolled through his contacts. He’d considered telling Ian about his idea earlier but shrugged it off almost immediately. This was his big day, and across the dance floor, he was sentimentally staring at Mickey as though there was nobody else in the room. He could thank Liam later.</p>
<p>“Wow!” exclaimed Fiona with a laugh when she accepted his FaceTime. There was a huge grin on her face as her eyes scanned the screen. “Who’s this handsome guy, and where’s Liam?”</p>
<p><em>Sisters</em>, he sighed internally.</p>
<p>“He’s here and really uncomfortable. Why did anybody think starching suits was a good thing?”</p>
<p>“Got me, kiddo. Only starch we could ever afford was potatoes and pasta.”</p>
<p>“Rich people make everything complicated.”</p>
<p>Fiona hummed in agreement and her expression softened a bit. “They sure know how to dress up, though. Better not be any girls there or they won’t know what hit ‘em.”</p>
<p>“There aren’t,” Liam assured her. “Kevin and Veronica brought the twins, and Carl just went to the bathroom with this slutty rich girl Debbie’s been sleeping with. Everyone else is too old.”</p>
<p>“Wait, Debbie’s doing <em>what</em>?”</p>
<p>“Don’t ask. You really don’t want to know.”</p>
<p>Liam didn’t particularly want to know either. However, living in their house meant being exposed to every disturbing notion under the sun. By now, he was used to it, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to spare Fiona the details. Luckily, she merely nodded and didn’t ask him to explain further. If she was that curious, she could talk to Debbie herself, although he had a feeling she wouldn’t. She’d left for a reason. Not having to stick her nose into the awkward dilemmas her siblings tended to cook up probably played a huge part.</p>
<p>“<em>Sooo</em>,” she segued easily as they silently agreed to sweep Debbie’s messed up sex life under the rug, “how’d the wedding go?”</p>
<p><em>That</em> was a much simpler question to answer.</p>
<p>“Pretty good once we found a place for it.”</p>
<p>“Found a place? I thought Ian said they booked the Bamboo Lotus.”</p>
<p>“They did. Then Mickey’s dad spray-painted some homophobic stuff on the outside and burned it down.”</p>
<p>“Shit,” she breathed, eyes wide. “I’ll bet Mickey loved that.”</p>
<p>“Ian and Sandy had to keep him from murdering Terry.”</p>
<p>“Sounds like him. Where’d you move it to?”</p>
<p>“The Polish Doll.”</p>
<p>Huffing an incredulous chuckle, Fiona said, “You mean, the place with a baseball bat called the <em>Fag Fixer</em> behind the bar?”</p>
<p>“That’s the one.”</p>
<p>“Jesus, how’d you guys pull that off?”</p>
<p>“Lip told the owner that Debbie was marrying Mickey instead of Ian,” Liam elaborated with a shrug. “Then Debbie distracted her until the ceremony was over.”</p>
<p>“And they haven’t thrown everybody out yet?”</p>
<p>Grimacing, he angled the camera over his shoulder so that she could witness the raucous display they’d all been subjected to. “I think she’s kinda busy.”</p>
<p>Fiona rolled her eyes so hard that her irises almost vanished into the back of her head, and Liam couldn’t agree more. Just when they thought there couldn’t possibly be any other crazy women in Frank’s repertoire, he dug up a new one.</p>
<p>“I didn’t think he’d show,” Fiona admitted once the initial exasperation subsided and was replaced with the disinterest that generally characterized their dealings with Frank.</p>
<p>“He wasn’t going to. I had to make him.”</p>
<p>Could he have told her that <em>making him</em> amounted to stealing his keys and de facto kidnapping? Sure. Was he going to? Of course not. It was bad enough that her sigh was simultaneously fond and a little patronizing. Now wasn’t the time to invite a lecture on why attempting to keep Frank around for more than the five minutes it took to sniff out money and beer wasn’t worth wasting his efforts.</p>
<p>“You <em>know </em>he’s n—”</p>
<p>“He’s been squatting at some mansion, and I needed a gift for the wedding.”</p>
<p>“So, you stole one?” she retorted incredulously, her obvious concern over the Frank situation effectively tabled. If it had been any of their other siblings, he got the impression she wouldn’t be so surprised. Liam would take that as a compliment.</p>
<p>“Temporarily,” he clarified. “They needed a car for their honeymoon. A <em>nice</em> car, not Debbie’s junker or Tami’s Fiat.”</p>
<p>“How nice are we talking?”</p>
<p>“Mercedes. Frank says it’s a classic.”</p>
<p>Her expression fell somewhere on the spectrum between disapproving and impressed, and Fiona paused a moment before warning, “Just make sure you get it back. We don’t need any more felons in the family.”</p>
<p>“Don’t worry. The lady that owns it is supposed to be out of town for the winter. She won’t even know it’s gone.”</p>
<p>Liam smiled, smugly satisfied at Fiona’s terse nod as she grudgingly dropped the subject. They both knew there wasn’t much she could say since their family had spent years surviving off whatever they could steal when nobody was looking, whether it was from broken-down meat trucks or one of the odd jobs Fiona picked up to keep them afloat. Yeah, this was a lot more than some milk and toilet paper, but it was a special occasion. With how much they loved each other, Ian was probably only going to get married once no matter what the statistics said. They might as well live a little, right?</p>
<p>Frank sure was.</p>
<p>Preferring to avoid <em>that</em> particular mental image and its literal counterpart, Liam glanced up from his phone to momentarily survey the rest of the room. Most of the guests had abandoned the dance floor in search of either food or alcohol, which left a few stragglers and only one of the grooms to keep the DJ busy. The other was sitting with Debbie, deep in conversation until the music shifted to something slower and sappier. Either Ian was ready to escape whatever they were talking about or he noticed how Mickey was suddenly floundering in the open space, because almost as if on cue, he rose from his chair and limped over to where his new husband was waiting. There was a slight grimace on his face that Liam assumed was from putting weight on his broken leg after standing for the better portion of the day already, and his expression was just sad enough to be out of place when everything had gone off mostly without a hitch, but neither lasted long. His discomfort dissipated the second he reached out a hand, gripped Mickey’s tightly, and pulled him in to wrap his arms around his shoulders.</p>
<p>For a tough guy who’d most likely only been able to pay for all this through some kind of scam, Mickey could be uncharacteristically soft. The version of him that held Liam’s brother close and settled his face in the curve of his shoulder was nearly unrecognizable from the one who sat on the couch every morning with a bowl of cereal and a mouth full of profanity. If not for his tattooed knuckles and bruised face, Liam would have thought the person gently running a hand up and down Ian’s side couldn’t have a violent bone in his body. All that the two disparate Mickeys had in common was Ian, who caressed they back of his neck with all the tenderness in the world.</p>
<p>It was really sweet. In a mildly disgusting kind of way.</p>
<p>His thoughts must have shown on his face. That or Fiona’s sixth sense for picking up on what they were thinking wasn’t out of tune in the slightest despite the months that had passed since she left. Whichever it was, she was smiling again when he looked back at his screen.</p>
<p>“Good party?”</p>
<p>“See for yourself,” he replied, flipping the camera.</p>
<p>And <em>that </em>was what made today perfect: the moment when her gaze fell on the grooms where they were swaying back and forth like a couple of old white guys who couldn’t dance to save their lives. Tears filled her eyes, and her grin wavered a bit. There was sadness, too, and regret that stemmed from being so close yet so far away on one of the most important days of Ian’s life. That didn’t detract from her pride, though, nor did it dim the brightness of her smile as they watched their brother wedge his chin into the side of Mickey’s neck and close his eyes.</p>
<p>The overhead lights brought his wedding band into sharp relief against his pale skin. Their weirdly traditional wedding colors complemented each other. Some famous guy was singing cheesy lyrics about falling in love as kids.</p>
<p>All in all, the atmosphere was soft enough to match Ian to a T. Like Liam, there was a marked difference between him and the rest of their family. He wasn’t a fixer like Fiona or a jaded genius like Lip or an opportunist like Debbie or a law enforcement nut like Carl. (That he’d survived even a month in military school remained a mystery no one would ever truly solve.) He was definitely a Gallagher: tough, resourceful, proud, and South Side to the bone. But… Well, he went to prison for going a little overboard with spreading a message of love. He spent his last and first days of freedom at home with the family. He chose a Mickey Milkovich that, according to Lip, had been so far in the closet he’d needed a map to find his way out and ended up dancing with him at their wedding years later. Sharp edges notwithstanding, Ian was filled with more fluff than all of Franny’s teddy bears combined.</p>
<p>He deserved this.</p>
<p>“They really made it, huh?” mused Fiona, apparently thinking along the same lines. </p>
<p>“Yeah.” Liam paused before adding, “Or it seems like it. Ian said fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. The straight ones, anyway.”</p>
<p>That made her laugh. “Well, then, I guess he’s lucky <em>I’m</em> the one who ended up with the divorce. They should be set for life.”</p>
<p>There was no arguing with that. No, Liam didn’t remember the early years of their relationship. To him, it was just more of the drama that followed Gallaghers around everywhere they went. But there were universal truths that emerged when you lived on the South Side, truths that couldn’t be changed.</p>
<p>Life was hard.</p>
<p>All you could trust was yourself and your family.</p>
<p>There were a lot of ways to make a living.</p>
<p>Frank was a terrible roommate.</p>
<p>And wherever Ian Gallagher or Mickey Milkovich went, the other wouldn’t be far behind.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Writing from Liam's perspective was a lot of fun. I don't typically write such straightforward prose, but between his age and general demeanor, that's Liam! This is a much more self-indulgent story than I tend to write, so I hope you enjoyed it. :) </p>
<p>Thank you for reading! </p>
<p>For more on my writing, Shameless, and assorted fandom madness, I'm on <a href="https://pathoftheranger.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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